Rude Awakening
by superwhomerlock-kid
Summary: Lily Evans has always Hated James Potter. He is nothing but an arrogant idiot. Or is he? The story follows Lily and James, along with their friends, through their seventh year at Hogwarts. The year where it all changes.
1. Realizations

**A/N: Hi! This is my first story to publish, I really hope you like it! I wrote it a while ago, but I didn't feel like I was ready to publish it just yet, until now. It was an idea I had been toying with for a while. **

**Please read and review if you like it! (Or even if you don't like it, I would LOVE some constructive criticism!)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. That Would be our Queen, J.K. Rowling.**

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><p>Lily sat by herself in the Gryffindor common room, finishing up the essay which had been assigned by Professor McGonagall earlier that day. It wasn't due until Thursday, but she had decided to get it out of the way early anyway.<p>

Normally she would do her homework in the head's dormitories, but Remus had invited his friends in to "study", which meant that HE would be there. _James Potter_; The boy, (for even though he was technically of age, he still acted as though he were ten years old) who had claimed to be in love with her for the last six years.

She suddenly noticed that while she had been lost in thought, she had neglected to pay attention to her essay, and there was now a blotch of deep blue ink spreading across the parchment that she had worked so hard on. She cleaned the mess up and quickly decided that the common was not the place to work. She bundled up her books and supplies and headed to the library, the one place she knew she could find a peaceful spot.

She walked into the library and went to sit at her favourite table, the one right by the window so she could catch a small breeze when it was sunny, with a perfect view of the quidditch pitch so she could watch... wait, what was she thinking? She didn't like Quidditch, let alone want to watch people play it! Especially not _him._However, when she got to the table, there was already someone sitting there. A someone with messy black hair and glasses.

"What the _hell_ are you doing here, Potter? I thought you would be up with Remus, Sirius and Peter?" She asked, slightly more forcefully than necessary.

"Well For your information, Lily-Pad, I needed to study, so I decided to come here. NEWTs this year, I know that we will probably end up fighting in this war as soon as we leave school, but I still want to get good marks you know." He replied.

Lily was so shocked by the response, the unnatural maturity of it, that she almost forgot to wince at the nickname. Almost. She may have even doubted his reasons for going to the library, if he hadn't added;

"And anyway, Peter had detention, and can you blame me for not wanting to be alone with those two all night?" Sirius and Remus had finally admitted that they had feelings for each other over the summer holidays, and she knew only too well that they were all over each other (in every sense of the phrase) ever since.

"Whatever, Potter." With that she turned on her heel and left the library, before realising that she still needed to study, so she went into a deserted classroom and started to do her Charms homework.

Before long, she became lost in thought about what James, no Potter, she reminded herself, had said._ Maybe he has changed, maybe he matured..._ She thought. _NO, what am I saying? he is an arrogant little toerag! An arrogant little toerag with the most amazing lips..._ She carried on with this train of thought before she remembered who she was thinking about.

"Oh Christ, Lily, Get a grip!" she muttered to herself. She remembered Alice telling her once that flying was great for clearing your mind of unwelcome thoughts. She stood up, her mind made up. She slammed her book closed and snuck out to the Quidditch field, where she grabbed a school broom and took off.

She was about 50 feet up in the air when she realised she was terrified of heights. In first year, she had never risen more than five feet above the ground, and she had never so much as touched a broom without strict teacher supervision. _Why did I decide to do this? Why?_ She was truly panicking now. She clung to the broom for dear life, which caused the balance to be disrupted.

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><p>The broom was jerking and twisting in the air when James looked out the window of the library. He saw her and immediately recognized the flaming red hair being whipped about by the wind. He dropped his quill, and ran out of the library, thinking of nothing but the fact that he needed to help her.<p>

He Ran straight to the Quidditch pitch, summoning his broom so he wouldn't have to look for it, and flew straight up to her, just as she lost her grip. She screamed and started to fall, and he watched her as though it was in slow motion. He zoomed to catch her, without even needing to think about it, and caught her about a second before she would have crashed to the ground.

He looked into those Magnificent Green eyes and heard her say, very faintly, one word, before she closed her eyes and fainted.

"James..."

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><p>Sirius woke up the next morning with a start. The room was much too quiet... James and Peter usually make an immense racket when they were getting up, and even when they slept, as James snored like an erumpent horn fed to a blast-ended skrewt, and Peter was no better.<p>

He rolled over in the bed, and as he did so, he realized that not only was it not his own bed, but that he wasn't alone in it. Lying beside him, snuggled under the duvet, was Remus. They must have fallen asleep after their attempt at a study session together.

They had started off perfectly fine, but then Peter had to go to detention, and James had announced that he had to go to the library (Sirius suspected that it had something to do with Lily), and they were left alone, just the two of them. Of course, they knew it would only be a matter of time before Lily came in to go to bed, but they couldn't help themselves.

In fact, Sirius was surprised that Lily hadn't burst in on them last night. It wasn't like they had been doing anything too bad, but they were making quite a bit of noise, as far as he could remember...

Suddenly there was a loud bang and the door flew open. James stood there, his hair looking even messier than usual, if that was possible.

"Moony! Help me! Padfoot isn't in the dorm, and..." he trailed off and turned distinctly pink when he saw Sirius in the bed. Remus had been awoken by the racket James made. Sirius couldn't help but notice how cute he looked first thing in the morning.

"What do you want Prongs?" He groaned sleepily.

"It's Lily, she..."

"Oh I should have guessed!" Interrupted Sirius, "It's always Lily."

"Padfoot, this is serious. And please don't say it, I know that you are Sirius, blah blah blah that joke got old in first year."

Sirius was taken aback by his usually light-hearted friend's now very serious attitude, so he shut up to listen to what he had to say.

"Lily's in the Hospital Wing. She went out flying, goodness knows why, she knows how horrible she is at flying, but anyway, she lost control, and luckily I spotted her and managed to catch her before she hit the ground."

There was silence in the room, which is a very unusual occurrence when the marauders are involved. Then suddenly Remus stood up and walked over to his distraught friend.

"Go to her. Believe me, she will want you there. If you were the one to catch her, Madame Pomfrey will let you. Go."

James did not need to be told twice. As if in a daze, he walked straight out of the room to the hospital wing. She was lying on the bed, her eyes closed. He turned to the nurse, and she told him that she had woken up, and would recover quickly. It was just shock, and she needed to sleep it off.

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><p>James sat by the side of her bed all day, apart from when he was forced to go to class, and when he got back from transfiguration, she was sitting up, with the pillows behind her supporting her back. As soon as she saw James walk in, she blushed bright red.<p>

"You're awake." He said simply. She nodded, but there seemed to be something bothering her. "Lils? What's the matter? Are you in pain? Do you need me to get Madame Pomfrey?"

He was standing up to go and get her, when Lily shook her head. "Did McGonagall collect the Homework assignments? I have done mine, but I never got to hand it in! I can't believe I decided to go out flying of all things! Like that would stop me thinking about..." She suddenly stopped talking mid sentence, and flushed an even deeper red than she had already been.

James was even more confused than he had been before, but he decided to think about it later, right now he needed to be helpful for Lily. She may not like it, but he was determined to prove to her that he could be responsible and mature.

"Well, you are_ not _going to fail, but if you're really worried about it, I will hand your essay in for you." He offered. Lily was dubious.

"And how am I to know that you aren't going to put your name on it and pretend you wrote it?"

"Because, you know as well as I do that McGonagall can spot a forgery a million miles away. Not that I'm hinting that you tried to cheat, but you have been in the same class as me for long enough and... Anyway, I've already handed mine in so... You'll let me?" He asked hopefully.

Lily looked as though she was about to argue, but in the end, her desire to hand in her homework on time won out over her distrust of James, and she simply shrugged her affirmation.

She had stopped referring to him as Potter in her mind after the accident, after all who was she kidding? She knew only too well (and she had a feeling Remus knew it too) that she, for some reason she would never understand, _fancied_ James Potter. The thought shocked her. How could she not have realized sooner?

And then, he was gone with her essay, leaving her to contemplate her sudden, wonderful realization.

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><p>When she was let out of the hospital wing the following day, everything was different. James Potter was no longer the bane of her life. In fact, she found herself disappointed by the fact that he no longer asked her out at every available opportunity, something which previously would have resulted in him being the subject of DADA research, more specifically, the effects of various hexes when combined.<p>

Finally, she worked up the courage to talk to Remus, at one of the very rare times when he and Sirius were not together. She cornered him before he went down to breakfast one morning.

"Okay. I think you know what I am about to say, but I need to tell someone, and you are probably the only person who won't laugh."

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><p><strong>AN: Hope you enjoyed it! Let me know if you would like to read more! :D**


	2. Confusion

**A/N: Okay, I know this chapter is quite short, but I just felt bad for not updating sooner and I wanted to update today! There is a bit of angst in this chapter, you can blame the fact that I was listening to a lot of Taylor Swift while writing it...**

**Anyway, hope you enjoy it!**

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><p>Lily's friends all noticed the change in her behaviour over the next few weeks, though none of them were really sure what had caused it. She had no lasting physical injuries from her accident, and she had never been the type to get overly worked up over anything other than school. Since there were no exams coming up, they were really at a loss.<p>

"Lily? Are you sure you are okay?" Alice Prewitt confronted her after a particularly bad Potions lesson, in which Lily had not even noticed the fact that she was chopping her porcupine quills instead of grinding them, until it was pointed out to her.

Lily was looking down the corridor at something, but quickly snapped out of it. "I'm just stressed after missing so much school, I guess." Alice followed her gaze, seeing four rowdy Gryffindors running round the corner towards the great hall for lunch.

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><p>Remus had noticed how Lily's gaze kept roving to where they were seated. He excused himself, making excuses of "Headly duties", at which the other three rolled their eyes.<p>

He walked over to her and sat beside her. She seemed to be working on an n essay, and while he knew that she didn't like to be interrupted, he knew that she couldn't have been paying too much attention to it.

"Hey, you okay?" She looked up at him, and threw her quill down on the desk, seeming to give up on trying to concentrate.

"Does it look like I'm bloody well okay?" She snapped "My head is pounding, I missed a TON of school work, and to top it all off, I can't get _him_ off my bloody mind."

As she spoke the last part, her eyes drifted over to where James was sitting, before seeming to snap out of it and returning her gaze to Remus.

"What am I going to do?"

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><p>"Lily, just pull yourself together okay? Calm down, It doesn't mean anything... Just... Calm down."<p>

She had just woken up, and was lying in bed, her sheets wrapped around her and her hair sticking up in all directions. She had been having a dream. It scared her, but it wasn't a nightmare.

In her dream she had been walking, hand in hand, with none other than James Potter. But that hadn't been the end of it. They walked into hogsmeade, somehow chatting and laughing easily, and didn't stop until they were outside madam Puddifoot's tea shop.

Suddenly she found herself sitting opposite him. The room was decorated for Christmas for some reason, probably because that had been the only way Lily had seen it, back in her fifth year. There was confetti in the shape of snowflakes drifting from the ceiling, and the small, softly coloured trees were emitting the soft sounds of Carols into the air.

She leaned across the table, looking into his amazing, hazel eyes. His lips were inches from her own as they closed the distance between them. She closed her eyes, and suddenly, she was lying in her bed, with Alice's deep breathing coming from somewhere to her left, and she had no idea what to do.

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><p>James had noticed that Lily was acting strange lately, and it worried him. What if she had hit her head while she fell and Madam Pomfrey hadn't noticed? Deep down he knew it couldn't be true, because she was still doing better than everyone else in the year. (Except, perhaps, at Potions... The snake pretty much had that one covered...)<p>

He had also caught her... Looking at him, once of twice. But she couldn't have been. She hated him, and after all he had put her through for the last seven years, he honestly couldn't blame her. He had somehow managed to convince himself that she was madly in love with him, and all he needed to do was make her realize it. He now understood how wrong he must have been.

He tried to avoid her, after that. He couldn't handle knowing that he had probably made her hate him, when, if he had just been himself instead of showing off all those years, maybe she would have fallen for him...

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><p>Lily saw him walking out of Charms class the following week. She walked up to him and said simply, "I need to talk to you, James."<p>

He looked as though he was scared of what she might say, but at the same time hopeful, and slightly relieved. "Sure... What is it?"

She swallowed. She hadn't thought this far ahead. "I, um... I wanted to thank you. You kind of saved my life before, and I never thanked you properly. So, Yeah. Thanks."

Really? That was all she could come up with? Jesus what was wrong with her? Surely she could come up with something better than that? Oh, well. The damage was done now.

James looked at a loss for words. He coughed awkwardly and ran his hand through his already messy hair. "Yeah, well... I couldn't just let you fall, could I? I mean, I... "He seemed to catch himself, to hold himself back from finishing that sentence.

"You what, James? Tell me."

"No, it's... It's nothing..." He stammered, and without another word he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Lily more confused than ever.

_What had he been about to say?_

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><p>What the hell was wrong with him? I mean, sure, he had asked her out countless times, but he had never said... <em>That.<em> He had been about to tell her that he loved her. Did he enjoy getting cursed? James Potter stormed up to the dormitory, Ignoring Sirius calling after him, and sat on his bed, pulling the curtains closed.

He sat there for a long time, brooding, until the door opened and he heard the door opening, and Sirius calling him. "Prongs? Are you okay, man? You seemed angry or something..." James peeked out of the curtains and saw his three best friends standing nervously just inside the door.

"Lily hates me..." He said, simply. He didn't have to say anything else. Sirius rolled his eyes.

"You need to get over her mate, face the facts, she's never gonna see you in that way. I mean sure, she might warm to you; you might even be friends if you let her be for a while, but... She doesn't like you that way. I know it's harsh, but you need to hear it."

Remus seemed to be having an internal battle. What was up with him? He seemed to be spending more time with Lily than with his friends, Sirius excluded of course. Suddenly, he turned and left the room, saying, "Don't give up just yet!"

James looked at Sirius. "What the hell was that about?" he asked. Sirius shrugged and left to talk to him. James knew he would never get over her, at least not in the foreseeable future, but he had to admit that what Sirius had said did make some sense.

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><p><strong>Like I said, Its a bit shorter than the first chapter, but I hope you liked it! How do you think they are going to work it out? Again, please review if you liked it, or let me know how I could improve! I love hearing from you guys! <strong>


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